suindaiy
matgazine
inside:
page four-looking back
page five-books
Number 7
Editor: Stephen Hersh
Associate Editors: Ann Marie Lipinski, Elaine Fletcher
October 24; 1976
/s lican No. in women's sport
s2
By ELAINE FLETCHER
IT WAS A BRIGHT, crisp Saturday
norning and the crowd entering the
stadium was bundled up to ward off the
cold. The Michigan marching band was
wrapping up its pre-game show, while
roughly 100,000 spectators raised increas-
ingly- deafening cheers. Suddenly the
voice of Howard King, the Michigan sports
announcer, exploded over the loudspeak-
ers. He called out each team member's
name, position and home town, as eleven
women in maize and blue pleated skirts
rushed onto the field swinging their field
hockey sticks.
The Michigan Stadium has never been
host to a spectacle such as this. Never
have women at the University received
the same kind of recognition and fever-
pitched support that male athletes in in-
tercollegiate -sports enjoy on this campus.
Elaine Fletcher is an associate editor of the
Sunday Magazine.
But while every Saturday the football
team rakes in the glory, power and touch-
downs that come with being number one
in that sport in the nation, female ath-
letes are occupying themselves with estab-
lishing their right to practice, play and
excel in intercollegiate competition. In-
tercollegate sports have only officially
been open to women for three years at
Michigan. Today the program offers seven
sports, is for the first time paying its
coaches a small renumeration, and has an
operating budget for the academic year
1976-77 of $185,000.
Why has this change come about at all
in a University which only a few years
ago forbade women to step out onto the
football field? Aside from the determina-
tion of the female athletes themselves,
credit can be given to an amendment to
the federal education bill of 1973, com-
monly referred to as Title IX. The es-
sence of Title IX as it relates to sports is
that no student shall be denied equal op-
portunity with members of the opposite
sex to participate in inercollegiate ath-
letics, according to his or her level of in-
terest and ability.
"Things have definitely changed," says
Kathy Knox, a recent University gradu-
ate, who watched the evolution of the wo-
men's program from the vantage point
of the swim team.
"When I started swimming, four years
ago, we had a volunteer enach, we had to
pay our own way to the meets." Now the
team has a part time coach, and its travel
expenses are footed by the athletic depart-
ment. And this year six deserving upper-
class swimmers were recipients of half-
tuition (in-state) athletic scholarships.
Says Jamie Spohn, a sophomore and
member of the varsity volleyball team,
"We have a better practice area, and our
own locker room. We're averaging around
fifty or sixty spectators -- that's because
we're on central campus, and were getting
more publicity."
In many cases, however, the changes
that have been made are only the first
steps towards compliance with the law
and the establishment of a top flight wo-
men's athletic program, competitive with
others in the state and in the Big Ten.
Last Thursday the Athletic department
made public a plan to put itself in compli-
ance with Title IX by 1978-79. Athletic-
ally - minded people across campus have
reacted with pleasure to such sound sec-
tions of the plan as one which would in-
crease the women's athletic scholarship
program sixfold - from $20,000 in 1976-77
to approximately $120,000 in 1978-79. But
along with the applause, there is criti-
cism for the vagueness of terms in which
other goals, particularly one requiring
large financial outlays, are couched.
"I'm not overly impressed with the
plan,"said Beverly Harris, who heads up
an athletic subcommittee for the Com-
mission for Women. "There are parts of
it that are good, like the scholarships, but
in reference to increased administrative
and clerical staff, the report does not put
forth a clear plan for growth with dates
for implementation. It rather talks in
terms of maybes and possiblys."
Marcia Federbush, a writer and consult-
ant in athletic concerns on the University
as well as public school level voiced a
more specific complaint. "Intercollegiate
golf, track and softball should clearly be
offered for women this spring. It's ab,
surd that the men's sports schedule offers
tennis, golf, track and baseball, and the
women only have tennis. I think the law
ought to push them."
According to Athletic Director, Charles
Harris, however, their timetable doesn't re-
quire that those sports be added until July
1, 1978. And that will happen only if a
club of interested student participants
bands together before that date and peti-
tions the Athletic Board in Control - the
group which governs the athletic depart-
ment.
IF WOMEN'S SPORTING facilities do
expand radically at the University in
the next few years, there's a good chance
that much of the credit will go to Virginia
Hunt, the new associate director of ath-
letics in charge of the women's program.
Hunt, who was the physical education
director at Woosters College in Ohio be-
fore assuming her post late last summer,
is perhaps one of the best things to hap-
See WOMEN'S, Page 4
Daily Photo by SCOTT ECCKER
Daily Photo by SCOTT ECCKER
SWIMMING COACH STU Isaac kneels bythepoolside during a team
practice, a few weeks before the start of the women's swimming team
season.
Daily Photo by CHRISTINA SCHNEIDER
TENNIS LUMINARY KATHY Karzen gets a word of advice on her stroke
from coach John Atwood.
Gymnast Marietta Mackevich
Eur hmy:
Daince
as
a
psychic
7
By LOIS JOSIMOVICH terms are the brainchildren of the late philoso-
rfiREE," SAYS Sheila Howard, thoughtfully. pher-artist Rudolf Steiner, the inventer of Eury-
"Yes, tree."_ thmy.
Her hands arch delicately over her head, bend- Sheila gropes for words to convey Steiner's
ing to touch it with slow fingertips. complicated philosophy, which is known as An-
"T-rrrrr-eee!" she trills, arms and back curv- s throposophy. "One becomes a being of body,
ing forward deliberately, in a diving motion. Her soul and spirit rather than just body and soul,"
pale green veil-gown drifts backwards; woman she says. "One experiences the energy of the
and veil are in contact witn the reeling or
sound.
Sheila is a student of the European dance
form called Eurythmy-a type of movement
which seeks to express visibly the essence of the
spoken word and the musical tone.
"We stand between the world of the visible
and the world of the invisible, which is behind,"
Sheila explains.
Performing Eurythmy is a matter of wea~v-
ing together the so-called 'threefold being'~~
the 'physical, astral and etheric worlds'. These
Steiner created Eurythmy in 1912 because he
felt that both ballet and modern dance (such as
that which developed into such schools as the
Martha Graham Dancers) lacked a wholeness
of expression. Ballet, he said, reflected the
Apollonian, or spiritual tendencies in man; mod-
ern dance the Dionysian, or earthy (with an em-
phasis on muscle). Something was needed to tie
the two together.
His answer was a series of 'archetypal move-
ments' representing various spoken and instru-
mental sounds, and accompanied by specified
colors in the dress. Color is very important to
exercise
Eurythmy, supplementing the gestures to give
a sense of the "essential quality of the gesture
of each sound," according to one book on the
subject.
JN'THE IMMENSE hallway of her home - the
Rudolf Steiner House on Geddes Road -
Sheila prepares to demonstrate a poem in Eury-
thmy. It is a short alliterative passage by Walter
de la Mare:
Wild are the waves
When the wind blows
But fishes in the deep
Live in a world of water
Still asleep.
"We perform facing frontally," she remarks,
shaking the static from her long gown and silk
chiffon veil. "It's only when one is doing a very
dramatic, elemental feeling that one can turn
away from one's audience - the movement goes
out through the audience and back to the per-
former."
Sheila's husband, Michael, begins to read the
poem aloud, very slowly, drawing *out every vowel
and consonant.
Sheila makes stooping, outgoing arcs across
the floor, arms stretched forward and slippered
feet arched. The 'w' sound in waves is repre-
sented by rhythmic sideways motions, the air
by an upward fling of the arms.
"Then it starts to come under the surface,"
she breathes, "there are the individual fishes.
. .then it becomes much quieter, and finally
on 'sleep' . . ." her hands come in close together
before her face and she reposes.
"There's an experience of the openness of the
space behind you expanding," Sheila says with
rapture. At the same time, she adds, "On's really
developing one's inner imagination."
SHEILA, A SLIGHT woman with serious green
eyes and straight brown hair has had a
wealth of training herself. She practiced mod-
ern dance and ballet as a young girl, then went
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